Illumination

For Baroness Mahault of Swynford

By THLaird Colyne Stewart

From fingers flow a scene,

Of gold leaf, red and green,

Ink and paint they dance,

The quill her quiet lance,

Lines arch crisp and lines arch clean,

To convey gift from her queen.

Mahault, while not having a full persona, did take her name from the Flemish version of Matilda. Therefore, I wanted to write something for her in the Flemish style. Flanders (which is now part of modern Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands) shared its literary styles with both the Germans and the Dutch. Therefore I decided to write a minnelied (which literally was a poem or song written by a minnesinger). I found an example of a minnelied that was six lines long with a rhyme scheme of AABBAA. The first two lines had 6-syllables, the following two had 5-syllables, and the last two lines had 7-syllables. This is the manner in which I wrote my poem.